Where the networking industry went
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
Most networking hardware companies were acquired by Cisco sooner or later, which is why so many threads in this graph converge on it. Granite Systems went there; so did a long list of others.
Jonathan Hare's relationship with the company began with a Michael Spence introduction to John Morgridge and extended across two of his own companies and more than a decade, taking in John Chambers, Ed Kozel, Padmasree Warrior and dozens of other executives.
There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.
Five meetings at headquarters, and the introduction onward
Open →chief executive 1995–2015The acquisition machine, and the era it defined
Open →chief technology officerCisco's CTO, more than once — and a Santa Fe Institute regular
Open →chief technology officerThe pitch that produced the first commercial customer
Open →sold Granite Systems toThe introduction that produced everything downstream
Open →made the introductionVice Chairman of Consilient, and the introduction into Cisco
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.
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